Recipients of University and Distinguished Professorships Announced

March 10, 2004

March 10, 2004, Greencastle, Ind. - Six members of the DePauw University faculty are being honored for their sustained excellence in teaching, service and professional accomplishment. Neal B. Abraham, vice president for academic affairs and dean of the faculty at DePauw University, has announced that the recipients of the Distinguished Professor Awards for 2004-2006 are S. Page Cotton, professor of kinesiology; Vergene Miller, professor of music; and Judith Raybern, professor of education. Dr. Abraham also has announced the appointment of University Professors for 2004-2008: Thomas Hall, professor of sociology; Bruce Stinebrickner, professor of political science; and Valarie Ziegler, professor of religious studies.

A special committee composed of Dean Abraham, John Schlotterbeck (Distinguished Professor 2003-2005) and Gloria Townsend (Distinguished Professor 2002-2004) reviewed dossiers prepared by the nominees as well as confidential letters submitted on behalf of those up for the awards. Recommendations on recipients were then made to DePauw President Robert G. Bottoms, who made the final decisions.

"There were many faculty colleagues who submitted impressive dossiers after being nominated for these awards," Dr. Abraham says. "Seventeen completed dossiers were considered for the University Professorships while nine completed dossiers were considered for the Distinguished Professor Awards. The dossiers were strong, and say much about our colleagues individually and about the collective strength they affirm for DePauw's faculty."

DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR AWARDS, 2004-2006: for sustained excellence in teaching and service

S. PAGE COTTON joined DePauw in 1969 as a coach of basketball, soccer and tennis. He joined the faculty as an instructor in 1972 and was promoted to assistant professor in 1977, to associate professor in 1985 and to professor in 1996. He is also currently director of athletics and recreational sports and men's soccer coach. At DePauw, Cotton oversees 21 intercollegiate sports, 20 intramural sports, 6 club sports, and a comprehensive informal sport and recreation program. His soccer teams have received NCAA tournament bids in eight different years, and Cotton is ranked 17th among Division III soccer coaches in total victories.

Page Cotton earned his B.A. degree in 1969 from Springfield College and the M.A.T. degree from DePauw in 1971. His teaching for the department of kinesiology has focused on coaching techniques, methods of teaching team sports, camp counseling and outdoor education, and physical education courses in tennis, golf, bowling, volleyball, racquetball, badminton, handball, soccer, and basketball. He has frequently taught a Winter Term course on facility management and programming. He also takes a teacher's approach to coaching, and his success in that teaching is reflected not only in the winning records of his teams but the successful careers of his soccer players as teachers and coaches themselves. Cotton's teaching and coaching are notable for his emphasis on hard work, discipline, enjoyment, and fair play, words his students use to describe the lessons they learned under his tutelage.

In his service to DePauw and the profession, Coach Cotton has been a member of the Petitions and Scholastic Standing Committee, the International Education Committee, the Committee on Faculty, the Campus Priorities Committee, and the Health Services Committee. He has been recognized regionally and nationally for his service to the NCAA and regional sports associations. He was the project overseer for expansions of recreational and athletic facilities including for the exercise trail, weight room, Blackstock Stadium, and the indoor track and tennis center. He oversees these facilities and directs the staff and programs that fill them with an eye to serving the whole University community, a mission which he has fulfilled to the benefit of all.

VERGENE C. MILLER has taught at DePauw since 1977. Appointed as a full-time assistant professor in 1981, she was promoted to associate professor in 1987 and to professor in 1995. She came to DePauw after a distinguished career, including long-term professional engagements with the Skylight Opera of Milwaukee, Chicago Opera Theatre, WGN-TV Artist Showcase Orchestra, Canterbury Summer Theater, and Shiek's Sextette of the Minneapolis Operetta Company. She has also been a frequent recitalist for the American Opera Society, The Chicago Symphony Club, the Lyric Opera Guild of Chicago and the Krannert Recital Series.

Professor Miller earned her B.Mus. degree from the University of Missouri in 1968 and her M.Mus. degree from Northwestern University in 1972. A devoted teacher of voice, vocal literature, opera literature, and vocal pedagogy, she has prepared many students for careers in opera companies. She also directed the DePauw Opera Theatre in 1990-91 and 1995-96. Her students have won major prizes, including frequent awards from the National Association of Teachers of Singing and major roles and prizes in opera productions and competitions including the Houston Grand Opera Auditions, The MacAllister Auditions, The Schmidt Auditions, the Miami Opera Auditions, and the Metropolitan Opera Regional Auditions. Her students continue a remarkable legacy of stellar performances and outstanding teaching careers. She has also frequently organized master classes and competitions. Her students regard her as an effective and supportive mentor, open-minded and well-informed, who guides them to finding strengths of performance they had not quite imagined were possible.

In her service to DePauw and the profession, Vergene Miller has performed at DePauw with the University Symphony and Choir, and she prepared an abbreviated adaptation of Donizetti's The Daughter of the Regiment for children's theatre that was performed at DePauw and at several other venues. She has also provided regional and national leadership for the National Association of Teachers of Singing, serving as president of the Indiana State chapter for four years. She served as resident director of DePauw's Eastern Europe program in 1989. She has also served on the Student Services Committee, the Divisional Nominating Committee, and the Petitions Committee. She has also served the School of Music recently on committees on accompanists, faculty loads, and the search committee for the Dean of the School. She is also known among her colleagues as both appreciative and supportive, a wise counselor and guide.

JUDITH A. RAYBERN joined the DePauw faculty in 1974 as an assistant professor of education. She was promoted to associate professor in 1980 and to professor in 1988. She served as chair of the education department and chair of the Teacher Education Committee from 1983 to 1997. She has also served as NCATE Exhibit Coordinator, helping to guide the department through successful national and state accreditation reviews.

Professor Raybern earned her B.S. degree from Butler University in elementary education in 1961, her M.S. from Butler in school administration in 1965, and her Ed.D. degree from Indiana University in elementary education: language arts, reading and curriculum in 1974. She has taught courses in elementary curriculum, developmental reading, corrective reading, reading diagnosis, foundations of education, introduction to exceptional children, curriculum and instruction, content literacy and learning, and language arts. She has also mentored and supervised many students as they have completed their student teaching and gained certification. Her students note how effectively she prepared them for careers as teacher/educators and how consistently she stays in touch, providing continuing mentoring and encouragement. They note her inspiration and her exemplary teaching which they still try to emulate.

In her service to DePauw, Judy Raybern chaired the task force to develop the Writing Competence Program in 1979, and served as associate director for faculty development for the writing program in its first two years. She also twice served as resident director of the DePauw program in Freiburg, Germany. She also served as a member of the Committee on Faculty, the International Studies Committee, and the Committee on Management of Academic Operations (which she also chaired). In her professional service, she has also provided state and national leadership to the national education honorary Delta Kappa Gamma, and has served on the Editorial Board of the Indiana Reading Journal, the Indiana Professional Standards Board, and the Indiana Association of Colleges of Teacher Education. She has also served on the NCATE Board of Examiners for accreditation visits to several other schools.

UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS for 2004-2008: for sustained excellence in teaching, service and professional accomplishments

THOMAS D. HALL has taught at DePauw since 1989, when he was recruited away from the University of Oklahoma to the Lester Martin Jones chair in sociology as an associate professor. He was promoted to professor of sociology in 1996 and currently serves as chair of the sociology and anthropology department. He has twice been recognized by the award of a visiting professorship at Colgate University as the A. Lindsay O'Connor Professor of American Institutions (1999-2000 and 2004-2005).

Professor Hall earned his B.A. degree from University of California at Berkeley in 1970 in anthropology, his M.A. degree at the University of Michigan in anthropology in 1971, and his Ph.D. degree at the University of Washington in sociology in 1981. As a teacher, he has contributed courses on social change, contemporary society, ethnic conflict, North American Indians, native nations of the US, among others, which have enriched the offerings in both sociology and conflict studies. He has served on the steering committee of the conflict studies program at DePauw and served as coordinator of that program for two years. He has been an effective mentor and adviser to many students, and is noted by his students to be an insistent critic of papers and ideas, stimulating students to ever more effective presentations and analyses. Long after graduation, many of them have written recalling his successful efforts to enlarge their perspectives on globalization and global issues.

A specialist in, as one colleague puts it, "frontier zones, where advancing Euro-American peoples encountered 'natives' who had thriving complex societies and cultures of their own," Hall has authored, co-authored, or edited 36 articles, 24 book chapters, 9 reviews, 49 book reviews, and 5 books. He has also delivered more than 100 papers or presentations and organized 40 panels at professional meetings.

Tom Hall's service to DePauw includes terms on the Committee on Administration, the Faculty Development Committee, which he now chairs, the Black Studies Committee, the officer roles of Division IV, the Conflict Studies Committee, and as faculty adviser to Amnesty International. He has also served professionally as secretary/treasurer of the Political Economy Section of the American Sociology Association and as a member of four editorial boards.

BRUCE STINEBRICKNER has taught at DePauw for seventeen years, having been recruited from the University of Queensland, Australia, to the position of associate professor and chair of the department of political science in 1987. He was promoted to professor of political science in 1991 and is now serving his fourth term as department chair. Stinebrickner presently holds the Frank L. Hall Professor of Political Science, an endowed chair which was awarded to him in 2001.

Professor Stinebrickner earned his B.A. degree with a major in government at Georgetown University (where he was also co-captain and MVP of the basketball team) in 1968, M.Phil. degree in 1972 and Ph.D. degree in 1974 in political science at Yale University. A specialist in American politics, he has taught such courses as Introduction to Government and Politics, American National Government, Political Parties, Research Methods in Political Science, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, Urban Politics, Introduction to Public Administration, Presidential Selection Process, and Public Policy. He has also developed a course on state and local government. His students report that he is both charismatic and challenging, clearly dedicated to their learning. He is noted for detailed comments on student work, and for his careful and innovative advising of students to explore the full opportunities of our liberal arts curriculum. Among his student admirers are those who rate him the best professor they studied with over four years at DePauw.

Dr. Stinebrickner's professional publications include co-authoring the sixth edition of Modern Political Analysis with Robert Dahl, which appeared in 2003. He has also edited twenty-six editions of an annually revised anthology on US politics variously published by Dushkin Publishing Group, Brown and Benchmark, and most recently McGraw-Hill. He has also edited eleven editions of an anthology on US state and local government for the same publishers and has published seven articles or book chapters including "Ten Observations on the 2000 Florida Controversy." Professional colleagues marvel at his versatility as an effective teacher, administrator and scholar, and at his prodigious productivity.

Among Bruce Stinebrickner's many contributions to DePauw are his service to international education programs, including membership on the International Education Committee, which he also chaired, chairing the search committee for two Directors of International Education and Off-Campus Study, and service as a faculty member in residence for the DePauw Buenos Aires Program and as the faculty resident director of the DePauw program in Freiburg. He is the representative for off-campus study at the University of Queensland and the Washington Semester Program. He has served as member and chair of the Public Occasions Committee, member and chair of the Affirmative Action Committee, and as a member of the Teacher Education Committee, the Athletic Board, the Committee on Academic Policy and Planning, and the editorial board of the DePauw Journal of Undergraduate Research. He has also served as the faculty representative for DePauw students nominated for the Harry S. Truman Scholarship, successfully mentoring two award recipients, in 1997 and 2002.

VALARIE H. ZIEGLER has taught at DePauw since 1995 when she was recruited to a position as professor of religious studies after having taught for ten years at Rhodes College. She completed her B.A. degree at Centre College in 1976 in history and religion (where she was also a varsity athlete in three sports and inducted into the Athletic Hall of Fame), her M.Div. degree at Yale University in 1979, and her Ph.D. degree in historical theology at Emory University in 1987.

Professor Ziegler teaches such courses as Christianity, Christianity in the Modern World, Feminist Theologies, Religion in American Culture, Genesis and Gender, Introduction to the New Testament, Screening the Sacred: Religion, Myth and Ideology in Popular America, and an honors seminar, Literature of Social Protest. Her students report that she is a dedicated, inspiring, engaging, and demanding teacher; they state that she creates a safe space for them to reflect on sensitive issues without fear, while inspiring them to new heights of critical analysis. In 1997, she was recognized by DePauw and the Board of Higher Education of the United Methodist Church as an exemplary teacher.

A distinguished scholar of American religious history, Dr. Ziegler is the author of two books, including Diva Julia: the Public Romance and Private Agony of Julia Ward Howe which won the Trinity Prize. She has also co-authored a widely used reader, Eve and Adam: Jewish, Christian and Muslim Readings on Genesis and Gender, and is a frequent contributor of book chapters and articles in professional journals and has been a regular presenter at professional meetings of both papers and panels . Her professional colleagues marvel at the scholarship of her books and how effectively they can be used in teaching. In 2003, DePauw recognized her with the Edward L. Minar, Jr. Scholarship Award, a prize given for exceptional scholarly achievement, for her new book on Julia Ward Howe.

In her college and university service, Valarie Ziegler has served on the tenure and promotion committees at both Rhodes and DePauw, currently serving on the Committee on Faculty. She is or has served as a member of the Compton Center Advisory Board, the Sexual Harassment Committee, the Affirmative Action Committee, the Task Force on General Education, the Search Committee for the Dean of the Chapel and as a member of the working groups of faculty for the Women's Studies Program and the Jewish Studies Program.

DISTINGUISHED PROFESSORS